Whiskey Moon

He always knew I’d come again eventually.

I make my way to the kitchen, spotting my father’s full head of snow-white hair as he sits alone at the table, staring out the window toward Odette’s rose garden out back.

“Hey, Daddy,” I say, soft and sweet so as not to startle him. Striding up to the table, I wrap my arms around his shoulders and give him a hug from behind. “How are you feeling?”

He lifts his hands, placing them on mine. “Tired. But happy. Because you’re here.”

Taking a seat beside him, I rest my chin on my hand and take him in. He looks the same as he did the last time I saw him, which was Christmastime in the city. Every year, my father and Odette make no less than three trips to New York. She gets to do her shopping and he gets to spend quality time with me and get out of Wyoming for a hot minute. Because they visited so often, knew how busy I was, and realized Whiskey Springs had nothing on Manhattan, they never pressured me to come home.

“What did the doctors say?” I ask.

He chuckles, swatting a hand. “They said what they always say, that I need to leave my job, move a little more and eat a little less.”

“Seems like a reasonable prescription.”

“Odette thinks I should take up jogging with her.” He slides his hand over his soft belly. “Thinking I should start with walking first and see how that goes.”

“Baby steps.”

He snorts. “Exactly.”

“So when do you think you’ll be done at the bank?” I avoid the use of words like quit or retire around my father, because they’re the last things a workaholic wants to hear. For as long as I can remember, my father has been the president of the largest savings and loan in the tri-county area, catering to humble clientele and multi-millionaire ranching outfits. He specializes in agricultural loans and programs, and people come from miles around because he’s the best in his business. Oftentimes, he’s the only one who will say yes when everyone else says no. I’ve lost track of the amount of farms he’s saved over the years, though my father’s not the kind of man to keep a running count anyway. “Are you worried they won’t be able to carry on without you?”

My dad laughs. “It certainly won’t be the same, but no, that’s not why I still work.”

“Are you worried you’ll be bored?”

He shakes his head, eyes wide. “Definitely not. Odette’s got a laundry list of vacations she’d like to take and projects around the house she’d like me to tend to—which is what I was doing when I took that spill the other day. I just love what I do, Blaire. It doesn’t feel like work to me. Just not ready to give it up yet.”

“I understand.” I place my hand over his and offer a sympathetic smile. “We’ll just have to work on the moving more and eating less stuff for now.”

“How are things in the city? Getting callbacks?”

“I had an audition a couple of weeks ago, for an off-Broadway production of Colton Conway’s Violent Sapphire … it’s about a woman who loses her husband and unborn infant on the same day, in two different ways. Very tragic, but such a powerful character and it’s a role I’d give anything to play. The director liked my spin on Sapphire, the main character. I guess I thought I’d hear back by now, but they must’ve gone in another direction.”

“I’m sure you’ll hear something. They’d be fools not to snatch you up.”

“I don’t know, sometimes I wonder how much longer I’m going to keep chasing this thing … I’m going to be thirty in a couple of years, which is practically ancient in this industry. And let’s be real, I’m no Meryl Streep. No one is. If I haven’t made it by now …”

“Hey now.” My father clucks his tongue and tips his chin. “I didn’t raise a quitter.”

For the past ten years, I’ve been on hundreds of auditions, booked a handful of off-Broadway plays, one Broadway understudy role that was never materialized into any actual performances, a couple of local commercials, and a long-term part-time job playing a medical patient at a teaching hospital two days a week. Giada always refers to it as my “Grey’s Anatomy gig,” though it’s hardly as glamorous. And it turns out there are slightly more McNerdies than McDreamies—and most of the McDreamies-in-training have hospital-sized egos to match their rampant good looks.

“I’ve been thinking about making the move out west,” I say. “To LA. There are more commercial opportunities there.”

The hot lights of a stage and the unparalleled thrill of a live audience have always been my calling, but at the end of the day, acting is acting and a job is a job. I’m trained, I have a modest resume, and there’s an entire industry I’ve yet to tap into.